Hearing tests are generally conducted by hearing institutes or laboratories, and are performed using specialized medical devices such as audiometers, special headphones and sealed rooms. The most common type of audiometer generates pure tones, with varying amplitudes as chosen by a human operator, typically a hearing specialist, and delivered to the subject's ears through the headphones. During testing, the subject indicates that a tone was heard by pressing a feedback button or by a visual signal to the operator. The audiometer enables the operator to produce an audiogram, describing the subject's hearing acuity.
Current methods and systems for performing the hearing tests can be less than ideal in at least some respects. Presently, the art requires expensive equipment and an audio specialist using specialized medical devices, as part of the hearing test to get accurate results. This requires substantial expense and time, thereby preventing many end users from receiving adequate hearing testing, or hearing surveillance, which could help to identify and prevent hearing deterioration. A practical method for tracking such deterioration was suggested by the Occupational Health Service for the Northern Ireland Civil Service (MacLurg et al., 2004). The analysis they provide may serve as guidelines to produce alerts or advice regarding the state of a user's hearing. However, this requires that the user undergoes periodic hearing tests.